The planting begins!

The weather has been holding - it has been so wonderful - really feels like paradise!

I've been busy planting more flats of seeds. For the flats I decided to use 'soil blockers'. This is a great system where you don't use countless plastic pots, instead you use this very cool handy-dandy tool that squeezes together blocks of soil/peatmoss and then pops them out with a little hole ready for the seed! It is pretty labour intensive at first but what is cool about soil blocks is the ease in transplanting them - no messing with pots, just make a hole in the bed and drop in the soil block. Below is a link with a video of how to make soil blocks - my soil blocker is just the same but is a hand-held one, not a stand up one:

http://wannafarm.com/?p=7

And here is a picture of the happy, happy seedlings in my hoophouse. I started each flat off in a bathroom in my house where I could pump up the heat locally, and then once they germinated I moved them to the hoophouse. I built a 'tent' inside the hoophouse with a heater inside it. The flats are placed on top of the tent (you can see this in the picture) forming a giant heat table! So far it is working very well as our temperatures are still getting quite low at night - about 2-3 degrees C. This way I don't use as much energy trying to heat the whole hoophouse.


In the forefront you can see endive, mizuna and pac choi seedlings.

seeds and sun!

The last week has been gorgeous - sunny and mild. What a relief after a seemingly never-ending cold spell. This warmth has, of course, got me into a frenzy of action in the garden. Paul built me a hoophouse to house the transplants and I've also set up my potting area in it. This week I've started 15 flats of seeds: leeks, endive, mizuna, bulb fennel, salad greens, parsley, chives, dill... The problem is that the hoophouse isn't warm enough at night for the seeds to germinate so I have them at home in one of my bathrooms with the heat pumped up! This is fine until they germinate when they will need light too. Decisions, decisions: set up grow lights in my house or heat the hoophouse a little!!

the hoophouse looking North

the hoophouse (and Paul) looking South

This week I also did some work at Lee Ann's. I prepared six beds - turning over the rye grass and clover that had been planted in some of them. In two beds I planted snow peas and in one other I planted radishes. I'm planning on succession planting these items in a couple of weeks.

I'm itching to get started on the Henry Rd property. It is still a little early to get the tractor on it though, the soil is too wet. Patience Dawn, patience!!